Landscapers!!! Reduce labor cost by 40% with maps!

I was on stage at the Lawn and Landscape Technology Conference back in August, when Ben Collinsworth (Director of Operational Technology, Yellowstone Landscape), said something remarkable: 

"The takeoff goes through an estimating system that spits out a price and then we hand that to the crew and say, hey you got 6 hours to do the job. Good luck! I am an old football player so it’s like saying hey guys go score a touchdown…well what play do you wanna run? I don’t know, just figure it out. That’s what we do with our crews, we hired you to do that job, just figure it out. They hire quarterbacks in the NFL to play football too but they give them a plan."

It’s crazy to expect your team to do well if you don’t give them a plan of action. 🙁 That’s a universal truth. So many people with so many thought processes can work successfully towards a common goal only when they have a path they can follow!

Anyway, Ben’s validation was just one in a long list of validations I had been hearing for a while: 

1️⃣ The Brickman Group had a culture of planning operations on every site. They had a guy moving across the branches, training production managers and crew leaders on creating plans and following them in the field. This was a core pillar of operational excellence at the firm.

2️⃣ Ken Thomas and Ben Gandy from Envisor Consulting say it’s possible to save 20-40% labor time by effectively planning and training the crew to follow the plan.

3️⃣ An Operations Manager of a $70 million landscaping company based out of North Carolina said this to me: “Every time a crew leader comes to me and says it’s not possible to do the job in the hours we have, I sit with them, create a gantt chart that breaks out the job in small tasks that they need to do on a timetable.”

Operations planning using motion mapping and Gantt charts is a time-tested practice to improve crew efficiency.

Level 1 Plan (Reduce Waste) 👊

It includes the service area boundaries and truck parking locations. This is nothing fancy but it helps your crew to avoid mowing outside the boundaries and ensures everything within the boundaries was mowed. In a nutshell, it reduces waste.

Level 2 Plan (Consistency of Quality) 👌

In this plan, the site is broken down into smaller, easily serviceable areas called zones. It also includes order of operations from one zone to another and allocation of hours across zones. It reduces the size of the job for the crew. Consequently, smaller jobs create less confusion and increase efficiency. 

Level 2 gives you consistency of quality. If the crew is not breaking down a 40 acre site into smaller pieces to conquer one by one, they are not going to be able to deliver a consistent quality of service across the zones. 

Level 3 Plan (Maximum Crew Efficiency) 👷

It includes path planning/motion planning - connecting every little service area with the path of motion. It also has order of operations at crew level on a Gantt chart. 

This type of plan is extremely useful in cases when the crews aren't able to service the site in the budgeted hours and they need to understand how to save time on site and organize the work. 😊

What are Gantt charts for?

Gantt charts show the dependency relationships between activities and the current schedule status.

So if Tech 1 looks at the Gantt chart in the above example, he would see he needs to complete the 60 inch mower areas by 12.30 and start blowing. He would have 1.5 hours to finish blowing. 

Is anyone using these plans? 👀

From what we have seen while working with nearly 300 landscaping companies is that most companies use only the Level 1 plans. 😐 They have that in the kickoff meeting when the crew visits the property for the first time. Most good quality operations would be doing this already.

Level 2 is less common but still used as it helps with rotation through properties and also breaking down a bigger job into smaller, more manageable pieces. It is usually put into action when quality issues are reported.  

Level 3 is the least common. We have only seen 4 companies create Level 3 plans (that's 0.5% of the companies we have spoken to 🤯). Over the winter season when the production manager has the time, they prepare for spring by creating these plans. For the rest of the year, it is impossible to make them sit in front of a computer to create the plans. No one has the time! 😪

How to create these plans? 🤔

1️⃣ Free up your schedule and sit down in front of your computer. Take a deep breath and begin. Open your tools.

2️⃣ Mapping tools - Pick up drawing tools on a mapping platform like SiteRecon to create service zones and motion maps.

3️⃣ Gantt charts - Use MS Excel or Google Sheets to create gantt charts

Review the plan with the Account Manager to make sure your plan is consistent with what the customer expects.

How to make them work? 🧐

Find some time to talk to the crew for training. Best to do this on the site, while walking through different areas and discussing how to service them.

Handover the plan with the crew - you can give them a print out of the plan. If you have used Siterecon to create the plan, your crew will have access to the plan on their mobile app.

Follow up with the crew every time they visit the site to make sure the plan is being followed. This is easier said than done. Not all crews will be receptive to change. Majority of them won’t be.

What you are looking for is an open-minded crew leader (younger ones are more open minded, technology savvy). 😎

Be patient and wait for the efficient motion to take root. Keep an open mind to any suggestions coming from the crew on moving more efficiently onsite.

Monitor labor hours on site and verify if you are seeing efficiency gains. 

Where to start? 💁 ♂️

1️⃣ Identify who will create the plans. If it’s you, resolve to see this project to the end.

2️⃣ Get trained to create the plans - We are planning a webinar with Ken Thomas, Principal at Envisor Consulting to give you a crash course in 1 hour. Envisor has been working with production teams across the country for 15 years to make them more effective.

3️⃣ Get the tools -

🔴 Sign up on Siterecon - CLICK HERE

🔴 Learn how to create Gantt Charts on Ms Excel

4️⃣ Start the work. Or, we can create the plans for you. Tell us the production hours, crew and equipment you have. We will give you the plans.

Book a Call

When you try to tell your crew what to do without having planned the entire operation.

Written by your wingman

Utkarsh Sharma